Living With the Dead: This New Disease (Book 5) (26 page)

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
The
team and I are home. After a very brief stay in Clinton, during which
we confirmed some of the information they'd sent us before accepting
the job, we headed back. Fortunately there were fewer zombies on the
roads and bridges, and the trip was uneventful.
Once
I got here, however, I found myself beset with messages from people
all over the country. Some congratulatory on our decisive victory
over the marauders, but many more questioning my team's actions on
this trip. Why were we so sure they were marauders beforehand? Yes,
we discovered proof of their previous crimes in the middle of killing
the lot of them, but why hadn't I published any proof beforehand? Did
we really know they were a threat to Clinton
I want to answer,
even though I face no consequences at home from my actions. The team,
who remain nameless for now, acted on my instructions. I made the
calls. I was the one who made the decision to commit wholesale
murder. I don't feel good about it, but honestly, I don't feel bad
either. That alone is enough to make me lose sleep. There should be
guilt or self-hatred or
something 
inside
me that marks my psyche the same way their blood marred my
clothes.
There isn't.
How did we know what they were
before we went? When the marauders appeared in the town near Clinton,
they had a prisoner. A woman. She escaped as they were trying to
transfer her from one vehicle to another. She didn't suffer the
perversions that many victims of marauders have historically, but she
definitely was a captive. A few of Clinton's scouts caught her as she
made her way through the woods and brought her back since she was
such a security risk. The chance existed that she was a spy, after
all.
I couldn't mention it before mainly because if the
marauders actually did have some means of reading the blog, they
would have known for certain that they were close to the potential
victims they were searching for. The woman and I had a long
conversation, and I'm convinced of her sincerity. Unless she's had
some in-depth acting classes, I think she's honest. And the things
she overheard about the marauders' plan when they found Clinton were
not at all kind.
So, yes, we had some admittedly questionable
proof beforehand, but given her starved and bedraggled appearance I
can understand why the leadership of Clinton asked us to act. They
had every reason to believe they were in imminent danger, and the
marauders weren't acting in an open and communicative manner as most
decent survivors would.
I remember the hot, sick feeling I had
so long ago when Patrick and I burned the first big group of
marauders we found. We killed them in their sleep, and I thought then
that I had become something other than a human being. It's been a
long time since I was faced with a decision similar in size and
scope. Then, I tortured myself with the knowledge of what I'd done.
The world was still dying in those days.
Now that the world
has long since fallen still from those final throes and something new
has been born in its place, I have to wonder at what I've become. I
think before this trip that everything I've ever said about
hard-nosed practicality has just been buildup to this moment. I'm not
some serial killer completely devoid of emotion on this. I hate that
I had to do it. I hate that those people had to die. But I don't feel
guilt about it, because I recognize the complete necessity of the
act. I can say with complete honesty that I feel the world is a
better and safer place because of my actions.
I don't know
what that makes me, but the fact that I still ask the question is
important, I think.
Now I'm off to tend to my wife and the
others. Pat and the girls deserve a nice, long break after covering
me so well.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Yesterday
was absolutely balls hot. Usually zombies aren't affected by the heat
short of a fire, but apparently the New Breed sensitivity to variance
in air temperature has increased. I did a short run along the walls
to get some relief from the muggy swamp that is my house, and I saw
it with my own eyes. The undead weren't as energetic, stayed back
from the walls for the most part. Except for the lack of sweat, their
reaction was eerily human.
I'm
not complaining, mind you. Having to fight in hundred percent
humidity is not my idea of a good time. I had a lot of free time to
kill anyway, since Jess and the others have been temporarily removed
from my house.
The heat is the culprit. While I was out of
town, the decision was made to work on creating a space that would be
cool and comfortable for the sick people. A few ideas were tossed
around, but in the end it was my brother who finally engineered a
solution. He got the idea from a technology he'd heard about before
The Fall, but hadn't actually seen in action. It's a kind of air
conditioning that uses a lot less power than a traditional system.
It's complicated, but the whole thing runs on solar during the
day.
Basically, the makeshift infirmary we set up in the
expansion is being cooled by a big ass block of ice.
Dave made
sure to close up all the holes and ran some rough ductwork through
the whole place. The AC unit itself is a big metal box, waterproof,
that is filled with water. There are copper pipes that run through
it, and the solar panels power a compressor (condenser? I don't know,
he built the damn thing) that freezes the water around the pipes into
a big, solid block.
Then air is pushed through the pipes,
cooling it down a hell of a lot, and it's blown into the
infirmary.
It's not perfect, but it works. The actual freezing
part happens mostly at night, by batteries. Those are mostly charged
by the solar panels (there's excess during the day, as all they power
is the fan and compressor) though apparently we've used generators as
well. Weighing human life against fuel consumption isn't really even
a discussion worth having, is it?
It's a slapped-together
system, and ugly as hell to look at, but the damn thing works well
enough to make the infirmary tolerably comfortable. The other
measures we've taken to reduce the heat in there help a lot as well,
but my hat is off to Dave and his nearly MacGyver level of
ingenuity.
I'm gushing a little here, but I can't help it.
This is a sustainable (at least until the solar panels give out or
some part of Dave's hasty construction breaks) solution to the insane
heat we're all dealing with. To keep the infirmary as cool as
possible, they've limited the times that people can come in. Think of
it as the end of the world version of your mom yelling at you to shut
the front door because she's not paying to cool down the whole
neighborhood.
Which means I can only visit Jess and my people
during visiting hours or when I'm pulling a shift in there myself.
That may not seem like a big deal, but I've been in an all-or-nothing
situation at home for a bit now. I'm either around Jess and my other
patients all the time, or I'm away on a trip. Granted, that only
happened once since I've been caring for them, but it's hard to get
used to being so close but unable to just swing in.
When Will
told me all the sick people were being relocated, I was surprised at
how much it really didn't bother me. Sure, I wanted to stay at home
with them. But I'm healthy and mobile and the heat was nearly
unbearable to me. I can't imagine how badly they were
suffering.
Still feels like my world has been knocked off its
axis, though. Days away helping out the folks at Clinton was enough
of a disruption to my routine. Not seeing Jess by walking into
another room is weird and disconcerting. She's only a few hundred
feet away, but I miss her. A lot. I miss the others as well...though
I admit to some small relief at not having to prepare food for half a
dozen people at once. I'm not happy about the situation, but I won't
lie and say there aren't silver linings here and there as well.
Now,
if it would only get hot enough to kill the zombies outside instead
of just making them lazy, we'd really be getting somewhere.

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Not
having a national weather service anymore, no one knows how long the
heat is going to last. However, this being summer and New Haven not
being full of idiots, we're taking a mental leap and assuming it's
going to be hot for a good long while. I've decided to take rotating
shifts in the infirmary, some days working in the morning, some
evenings, some nights. It works out better for me since I'll get to
see Jess more often, and at least nights will let me work when the
air is coolest. That's one blessing, I guess--night time hasn't been
as murderously hot as it has in previous years.
I can happily
report that Jess is doing a little better. That took me by surprise,
I have to admit, since few of our sick people show signs of
incremental improvement. Most of the time they get worse and worse,
then either wake up fine or don't wake up at all. Some small number
improve slowly, and I can't tell you how happy I am that Jess is one
of them.
I wish I felt a little better, myself. I've been
keeping myself busy since yesterday, covering breaks for guards and
sentries on the wall for a while, helping cook, giving Pat a hand
(haha, I made a funny. Because he cut off one of his hands. Get it?)
at the forge. Little things to help where I can and occupy my mind
now that the house is empty. I won't say that I wish for a zombie
attack because that's stupid, but I wouldn't mind having something to
completely focus on for a while. Life-or-death struggles are good for
that.
I'm just being crotchety and out of sorts, I know. Being
home alone is still a new thing for me and I don't have a routine to
take comfort in. I raced through all the work Will had for me
yesterday in about two hours, which is why I went out to find other
things to do. I kept so busy and wore myself out that I came home
last night and curled up next to the escape hatch in the floor of our
kitchen, burrowed up inside my tatty old comforter.
I really
thought about just climbing under the house, which was very cool in
the wee hours of the morning. I love being cold, but my stupid brain
doesn't let me sleep comfortably without a blanket. There's a
plastic-lined space to store food down there, one I could have fit in
easily. As it is, sleeping on the floor left me tired and stiff.
Probably better that I didn't add the potential stress of waking up
in a cold grave underneath a house. I got over nightmares about that
years ago. Goddamn obsession with movies about serial
killers...
Damn, I'm out of it. Kind of zigzagging all over
the place this morning, aren't I? The messenger from Will isn't here
yet, so I don't know what my workload for today is going to look
like. I'm awake and ready to go, but have nothing to do at the
moment.
My neck is really, really sore though. I might go a
few houses down and see if Dora is home. She's a nice lady, somewhere
in her fifties, and she used to work as a massage therapist. She
might be willing to work out some of the knots. I'm never sleeping on
the floor again, I swear. I'd rather fight a zombie than deal with
this kind of discomfort all day.
Then work. Then a shift in
the infirmary. Then, we'll see how much energy I have left.
Man,
I didn't sleep enough. So light-headed and out of it...

Posted
by 
Josh
Guess
Hi.
I know this post says Josh on it, but this isn't him. My name is
Stephen Kincaid, though no one calls me by my first name. You've read
about me here and there. You're probably wondering why I'm writing
this post. So am I.
Josh didn't name the teammates that went
with him to Clinton to dig out the marauders that had set up there.
He didn't want anyone bringing any scrutiny against us, especially
given my history. Guess that makes it pretty clear that I was one of
the other people. Not the marksman. I was the one who went with Josh
into the marauder camp. I helped do the dirty work.
While we
were away, I had a lot of time to get to know him better. I've read
this blog here and there over the last two years or so. What he
writes gives you an idea of what kind of guy Josh is, but just like
anything else you can't really know someone just from letters on a
screen.
During those days we were out, Josh got to know me
too. He admitted that he hasn't put a lot of effort into getting to
know me until now because of what I used to be. A marauder. A bad
guy. I can't lay much blame on him for that. I didn't like being that
person. I still have a hard time sleeping.
Danger and
proximity have a way of building rapport between people. Days stuck
together and mutually bitching about the scorching swamp our small
tent was, moving at a moment's notice to avoid detection, and having
to do...the things we did, all have a way of making our differences
seem minor. It's hard to judge a man for the terrible choices he's
had to make when you're having to make one just as bad
together.
Sorry, I know this is strange and I'm not doing it
right. I'm rambling. I'm trying to explain why I'm writing here and
not getting very close to the mark. Josh is sick. Not the new plague.
Just allergies leading to a plain old infection. He didn't even know
he had caught something until yesterday. He just thought his neck was
hurting because of how he slept. He'd been congested and feeling off
for a few days, but that's what happens to people with allergies when
trees are fucking all around them.
He's sleeping in the other
room right now, and thought it would be a nice change of pace for
someone else to put their voice out there. We've got each other's
measure a lot better now, and Josh thought it would help the other
former marauders out there gain some acceptance in their communities
if one of us had a platform to speak from. I have a hard time feeling
human some days, looking back on what I have done. I can understand
how many of you have the same problem when you look at us.
I
did promise to mention that there is some good news right now. Some
report from the doctors here Josh got last night says that the worst
of the new plague seems to be over. More people are getting better
than are falling ill. Deaths have tapered off. And his wife Jess is
improving.
I'm really happy about that. She has always been
nice to me. Never looked at me funny because of my history, just
treated me like a person. Which, when I think about it too hard,
seems like maybe more than I deserve.
Okay. I'm ending this
awkward mess. I told him I'm not much for writing. I had to read over
a lot of his posts to get comfortable enough to even do this. Josh is
going to take tomorrow off as always and if he's feeling better will
be back Tuesday.